Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Victorian Curiosities

Cards, stamps, and what zebras have to do with Victorian craftsmen.

By Maria Popova

We love visual thinking. And we’re all about curiosity. Naturally, we’re head over heels with painter, artist and bookbinder Johnny Carrera’s Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities — a charming, chunky volume of over 1,500 engravings from Webster’s 19th-century dictionaries.

Cleaned, restored and curated in a captivating and unusual reference guide for modernity, these engravings are both novel and iconic, radiating the enigmatic luster of vintage Victorian aesthetic. From to Aardvark to Zebra, the alphabetically arranged gem is both archival record and aesthetic feat, a treat for history geeks and design aficionados alike.

Also from the series, 26 delightfully nostalgic wall cards, one for each letter of the alphabet, reproducing the engravings from the book on sumptuously heavy card stock with superb typography.

And for a lovely final touch on this visual exploration of vintage curiosity, check out the Pictorial Webster’s Stamp Set, an extraordinarily authentic collection of actual historic engravings, embellished with all the details of line execution, shading, and perspective you’d expect from meticulous Victorian craftsmanship — not your average rubber stamp clip-art.

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Every week for more than 13 years, I have been pouring tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free (and ad-free) and is made possible by patronage. It takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and compose, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and solace in this labor of love, please consider becoming a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good lunch. Your support really matters.

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Sunday newsletter

Brain Pickings has a free Sunday digest of the week's most interesting and inspiring articles across art, science, philosophy, creativity, children's books, and other strands of our search for truth, beauty, and meaning. Here's an example. Like? Claim yours:

midweek newsletter

Also: Because Brain Pickings is in its twelfth year and because I write primarily about ideas of a timeless character, I have decided to plunge into my vast archive every Wednesday and choose from the thousands of essays one worth resurfacing and resavoring. Subscribe to this free midweek pick-me-up for heart, mind, and spirit below — it is separate from the standard Sunday digest of new pieces:

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